The Gnostic View of the Feminine, Part 2 (of 6)

This post continues a six day series showing how Dan Brown's assertions about the Gnostic view of the feminine is wrong. Each day's post is a small chunk of a complete article at my website at www.NewMediaMinistries.org Endnote references will appear at the end of the series.

The Nature of Gnosticism

Technically, Gnosticism is applied loosely to a group of ancient sects that held some beliefs in common, but they each developed varying ideas and complexities within that commonality. Although they are also placed under the umbrella label of "Christian" their beliefs held them well outside the teachings of early "orthodox" Christians and the Early Church, especially those of Jesus and the Apostles. They used a rather eclectic approach to develop a new religion. They borrowed from Eastern mysticism, Greek philosophy and Christianity. However, about the only part that was Christian was the terminology they used. They used, but redefined, Christian terms like God, Jesus, and salvation and so on to fit into the mythologies they developed from other sources.

The most important aspect of their belief system, as it relates to sexuality and gender, is their view of the body and the material world. From Greek philosophy they borrowed the belief that the physical world, including the body, is evil, and only the spiritual realm is good. This is called Dualism. In this Dualism the material realm and the spiritual realm are diametrically opposed. Out of this Dualism the Gnostics derived the belief that sex and sexuality is evil. Contrary to some popular beliefs this idea, that sex is evil, is not a teaching that came from the Bible or early orthodox Christians. Unfortunately, it crept into the teaching of some churches later for reasons beyond the scope of this article.

Tomorrow I will continue by addressing more specifically the nature of the feminine in Gnostic teaching.